(Prolifer)ations 3-5-10
by Susie Allen, TN pro-life activist
There is a multi-million dollar suicide promotion campaign ongoing in the country and around the world – aided and abetted by the mainstream media – that says that if you are sick, or disabled-suicide is empowering and rational. Indeed, it claims that such suicides are so right and worthy of being honored that the state should permit third parties to help make sure the suicidal person is made dead. …
It seems to me that society can’t be half against suicide and half for it. You can’t have suicide prevention and assisted suicide promotion at the same time. The former message is subsumed by the latter.
Mar.05, 2010 3:30 pm |
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Hope for Life 2010 Conference information is here.
http://www.operationoutcry.org/pages.asp?pageid=78926
Check out the amazing speakers that are scheduled!!
Please consider going to this event!!
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t see why listing people as organ donors is bad- if you don’t want to donate, then say so.
Pro-Life Action League discusses the effectiveness of picketing the neighborhoods where abortionists live.
So they are encouraging criminal harassment, are they? Classy.
A friend of mine is currently being harassed through both letters to and phone calls to her neighbors. It is terrifying. It is criminal (considering that mail was tampered with – anti-abort stickers placed on recipient’s mail). And it has to stop. You wouldn’t want that kind of horror unleashed on your or your family.
Harassment? I’ve only heard of PEACEFUL picketing. Neighbors need to KNOW if there is a BABY KILLER in their area.
Abortionists KILL UNBORN HUMAN BABIES. Its time AMERICA wakes up and REJECTS Abortion.
How many turned a blind eye to what slavery did to this country? Or how many turned a blind eye during the Holocaust (even when they smelled the burning flesh?)
For the first–and I desperately hope, the last–time, I’m forced to agree, with qualifications, with Dhalgren.
Abortion has a very “not in my backyard” stigma in the US. Which is awesome. Given enough encouragement, that stigma will be applied to everybody’s backyard and legal abortion’s death of attrition will come even faster than it is now.
However, it’s important to note that abortion is, at this moment, regrettably, legal. These “doctors,” for all that what they do is morally disgusting, are legally unassailable based on their profession alone. And we’re not dealing with people on the sex offender registery (although when abortion is made illegal, putting them there might not be a bad idea…). The actions they’ve done were done, in most cases, with the consent of the women they did them to. Leaning too heavily on a neighborhood and displaying big ‘ol signs and such could prompt some people to take illegal action against abortionists (or maybe protesters). And the abortionists are, at the moment, law abiding citizens, although utterly reprehensible ones.
Instead, I would take a softer tack of making communities aware of this information, but probably without pointing out specific street addresses or phone numbers. Or hanging out with signs in front of someone’s house. Unlike protests at abortion mills, protests in a neighborhood strike me as a big disaster just waiting to happen. What about a pamphlet with pictures made available at popular community hang-outs, for example? Neighbors would recognize the people in the photographs, but to strangers, it would mean nothing. The people who ought to know would still be informed, but it eliminates big protests in residential neighborhoods.
These campaigns against criminal abortionists in their own neighborhoods are an excellent idea. Remember these are criminals who are killing millions of people.
The unborn human rights movement should launch an aggressive and sustained campaign against the child killing industry, going far beyond just this neighborhood campaign. Every killing facility should always have several well-trained people counselling in front of it, every minute it is open. Every home of every criminal abortionist should be picketed night and day. Every office of every company which does business with the abortionists should be picketed and the homes of their executives as well. The goal here is to put sustained pressure on the industry and make it difficult for them to continue killing.
We should also picket the White House, the Capitol, House and Senate office buildings, the Supreme Court, Governors’ mansions, state legislatures and state courts. We should maintain a sustained campaign, keeping steady pressure on the politicians until they do something to stop the killing.
We need to convince the Roman Catholic Church to excommunicate worldwide all politicians who oppose unborn human rights and who are masquerading as Catholics. We need to convince the Orthodox, Protestant and Mormon churches to follow the Catholic Church’s lead.
We need to commit ourselves in our own lives never to participate in abortion crimes, not to kill our own unborn children nor to aid and abet the killing of other people’s unborn children. We need to commit ourselves never to support politicians who oppose unborn human rights. We need to do everything we can to defeat such politicians in every election and replace them with pro-life candidates. We need to create a climate in which such politicians can never win and never again threaten unborn children.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t see why listing people as organ donors is bad- if you don’t want to donate, then say so.
It’s not being an organ donor that’s bad. It’s being seen as spare parts that’s bad. And it’s the fact that presuming a person is an organ donor is to deny them informed consent. (What other surgery would we simply presume the other person would want? Because in order to be transplantable, the organs have to be taken FROM A LIVE PERSON.)
Read more here — and notice that the “brain dead” woman is MOVING. That to take her organs out they will have to give her paralyzing drugs because she will react to being cut open as a painful experience. Are we to do this to people WITHOUT THEIR INFORMED CONSENT?
I’ve blogged on the organ donation thing
And I wrote to the senator sponsoring the “assume they’d consent to being killed for somebody else” bill.
Christina, you are absolutely correct.
There is now, within the Catholic church, a group of scholars who say that the church’s support of the definition of brain death is seriously flawed.
We don’t know enough about the brain and death to be doing this.
I will never be an organ donor unless it’s something like my corneas that can be take AFTER I’m dead.
And I will never sanction myself or any of my family receiving a vital organ from a donor.
I can’t sanction the killing of another person to save myself or my child.
And as you’ve said Christine on your blog, the donor needs to be as alive as possible.
Not many people know that donors are sedated and given muscle relaxants. This is because health professionals have objected to working on patients who have reactions to being cut open and dissected while still alive.
And of course, there are the numerous stories of patients waking up, while being prepped for organ donation.
I think that it refers to if you die in a car crash, for example, it is automatically assumed that you’re a donor, unless you have signed the opt-out paperwork. They’re not dragging disabled individuals out of their houses and slapping them on an operating table. You have to be legally dead before the presumed consent applies- you don’t have to be alive to donate an organ. That’s where most organs come from- deceased individuals. True, you can donate bone marrow, a kidney, and (I think) part of your liver while alive, but something like your eyes or your heart or the second kidney requires, well, death first.
For example, when I turn eighteen, I’m going to register to be a bone marrow donor. It’s something that I really want to do (well I mean, not like visiting Europe, but I want to know that I might help someone live). When I die, my heart, liver, kidneys, and bone marrow will be given to someone else. I’m pretty certain that doctors aren’t allowed to remove anything that will be a jeopardy to your health- that’s why, from what I’ve read, you’re not allowed to simply donate your heart; that has to be taken after death.
I mean I could be wrong- I’m no expert, but I don’t think that doctors can simply take your organs- and this law won’t change that. It simply presumes that you’re an organ donor after death unless you say no. And unless you have a religious reason to hang on to your organs, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t donate- you won’t use your organs after your death.
I mean, I don’t mean to sound picky, I’m just saying. I would like hear your opinions on this matter, though. :)
Vannah,
At my age I don’t assume that people will do the right thing or even know the difference between right and wrong. What sounds moral to you and me is not how the whole world thinks.
I’d NEVER create an open-ended law because it could be open to wild interpretation. Take into consideration that this organ donor law is being proposed in ILLINOIS.
Can you imagine how the law could affect the lives of pre-mature babies?
“Maybe it’s just me but I don’t see why listing people as organ donors is bad- if you don’t want to donate, then say so.”
Because it means that the state of Illinois would have a legal right to use parts of people’s bodies unless those people specifically put in the time and effort to stop them. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to be an organ donor, but a lot of people, young people especially, don’t think about or don’t like to think about “what do I want to happen to my body when I die?” It’s donating organs versus mandating “donating” organs.
The point isn’t even so much taking a dead person’s organs without their permission. It’s KILLING A PERSON TO TAKE HIS ORGANS without his permission. In order for the organs to be healthy enough to transplant, the “donor” can’t be clinically dead. Just “brain dead”, which is a PROGNOSIS. They do not expect the person to recover; they expect him to die soon, Perhaps in a matter of hours. They may actually put the “brain dead” person on life support (how can your life be supported if you’re dead?) to keep them alive long enough to take the organs out.
It’s a macabre and frankly ghoulish thing and people need to know what it is they’re consenting to when they consent to be an organ donor. It should NOT be assume that the patient has no qualms about his death being hastened for the benefit of somebody else.
To clarify — in some cases, the person is kept on life support (and is thus ALIVE) until the organs are taken. In other cases, no life support is necessary; it’s just figured that the person has no chances of survival and has his organs taken out while he’s alive. Death is caused by the removal of the vital organs.
This woman was pronounced brain dead and recovered. Twice.
http://www.stillwatergazette.com/articles/2009/01/16/news/news110.txt
She could have been ‘harvested’ either time. Makes you think about how much we really know. It’s still called practicing medicine for a reason.
Vannah, what Christine is saying is correct.
The person is not dead. There is a heart beat, organs are functioning etc.
People grow on life support, mature etc…
There is a growing body of evidence from people who could not move any part of their body but could hear and understand everything while supposedly “brain dead”.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061308.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-404129/Permanent-coma-woman-amazes-doctors-remarkable-awareness.html
This is about making a determination using a set of criteria defined by doctors to declare someone clinically dead.
In fact they are not.
Organs are useless if taken out of the body after death.
There are certain chemical processes that begin within seconds of true death that make these vital organs useless for transplantation.
Thus, the need to get them BEFORE death.
This sort of thing has been going on for years but ignored.
It’s only as more and more organ retrievals are being done that nurses, doctors and residents are seeing what happens when organs are removed.
I have read the following and I don’t know of it’s true or not but I’m betting it is:
If you are a male with a gunshot wound to the head, you can forget about getting treated. These patients are almost always euthanized for their organs.
They are young, healthy and usually have no damage to their vital organs – making them perfect for organ donation.
Doctors usually tell the relatives of these patients that the situation is hopeless.
We’ve made few advances in treating gunshot wounds to the head because these patients are never treated.
I remember my super-Catholic grandma freaking out when she noticed I had “organ donor” on my driver’s license. I know there’s doctrine in the church which speaks out against that kind of thing, and this goes for a lot of different religious institutions. Personally, I don’t care, and their rhetoric sounds rather alarmist.
But then again, I’m really not going to be nit-picky about that kind of stuff anyway. If they make sure I’m dead by taking my organs out, great (even though I’m with Vannah, and I’m pretty sure they don’t actually harvest anything until you’re dead), I’d rather they made certain I was dead than to “help me recover”, which would really mean more along the lines of providing care to me to prolong my life while I’m drooling all over myself and crapping my pants. No thank you. I don’t care how alert I might seem or be to others, I don’t want to put myself and my family through that. I’d rather they put me in the ground, grieve, and move on with their lives instead of spending their time taking care of the shell of myself that my mind may or may not be trapped inside.
Well, you’re alive (I think- again, I’m not an expert; I’m not a doctor- I’m sixteen and I just failed my history midterm; I mean, come on…) but only in the sense that a machine is keeping your heart beating and keeping your blood circulating, for example. Your organs die without constant circulation, so you’re heart is still going. In a sense you’re still alive, but not really- only to keep the organs safe enough to transplant.
But I suppose that Angel and Christina make good arguments. :)
I think that the best way to avoid the confusion, then, of not wanting your organs taken if you fall into a nonresponsive coma (I’m sorry- I don’t know what the proper medical term is) is to, upon turning eighteen or getting your legal identification, stipulate whether or not you wish to opt-out.
As a nurse, I will tell you that this is a very bad law. Donating organs is such a touchy subject and a very difficult one for families to deal with. It should NOT be the “default” position under any circumstance.
There are many different cultures/faiths for whom donating organs is considered not acceptable… would those people, moving from any other state where they use the opt-in provision even know that they need to “opt out”?
No… this is bad, bad, bad on just so many levels. Why would they even consider making this the law?
Elisabeth, because they do not have enough donor organs.
They need something like 8000 kidneys – where does one get 8000 kidneys?
I have a friend who’s son needs a liver transplant. He’s been told he will have to wait 8 to 10 years.
Vannah, trust me you will NOT be dead when they harvest your organs…… :(
Trust me, I know there aren’t enough donor organs. (‘Twas a rhetorical question.)
This is NOT the way to go about securing more of them. If anything it will cause a backlash resulting in FEWER willing donors.
If anything, better informed consent should shorten the waiting lists because many people will opt out of receiving donor organs if they know they’re taken from living people. Many prolifers I know would not accept such organs for ourselves or our dependents. We would look for other treatment options.
And the fact that transplants have been possible has probably slowed research into other treatments.
Angel, kidneys and liver lobes can be taken from willing live donors without killing them. So an entirely different approach is in order. You don’t need to take organs from unconsenting people who are presumed to be dying. You can do a major advertising campaign to encourage people to be in a donor database.
true Christina, BUT, live donor organ transplants are not without their problems.
In fact, many doctors are becoming increasingly reluctant to do them because of the risks to the live donor, including failure of the remaining organ from an organ pair.
Such problems are not rare and simply compound the problem by placing someone who was once healthy on the transplant list themselves. :(
Angel, I’m not saying that live-donor transplants aren’t without risks. But they are risks that the donor undertakes willingly and after informed consent. Which in most cases a “brain dead” donor (or his proxies) do not do. The family giving consent often has no idea that their loved one will be killed by the act of removing the organs for transplant. It’s a decision being made while they’re in great shock and under tremendous stress. This is NOT the idea circumstance for giving informed consent!
We need to have an honest dialog about organ transplants. And right now the pro-transplant voice is the only one being heard.
Wow. I really had no clue that so much opposition to something that saves so many lives on a regular basis would exist. It’s mind-boggling.
Christina, I’m on your side! ;D
I agree with you completely.
I agree that this proposed law is BAD.
I also agree that by pushing the organ transplant system, many other treatment options are not being pursued.
That was my point about the gunshot wounds going untreated.
The article I read, which was months ago, stated that if you look at the survival rate for gunshot wounds to the head for young men over the past 30 years, there has been little to no improvement. Why?
Because these injuries aren’t treated – instead the person is prepped for organ donation and the parents are lied to.
I personally know of a young man (the family were neighbours) who this happened to.
They donated all their son’s organs as they were told his condition was “hopeless”.
I felt sick to my stomach because who really knows what his state was.
Wow. I really had no clue that so much opposition to something that saves so many lives on a regular basis would exist. It’s mind-boggling.
Posted by: xalisae at March 7, 2010 12:22 PM
except THAT is the problem xalisae.
someone has to DIE in order to save another person’s life.
These organs cannot be taken from dead people because they are not useable.
So the donors are living human beings who are still functioning physiologically.
We don’t know enough about the brain and how it heals itself to be doing this.
Some people in what’s termed a “persistent vegetative state” (a term I loathe since we are humans not vegetables) are likely in the process of dying.
But many others may not be. They may be healing. It may also be that we don’t know right now how to help them heal and reawaken.
To use them for spare parts is simply wrong.
Angel, it’s not saving lives we object to. It’s killing Peter to save Paul. People don’t perceive it as that, because they’re told that “brain dead” equals “dead”. But it doesn’t. “Brain dead” isn’t properly a diagnosis; it’s a prognosis — a prediction of what the doctors expect will happen. In the case of “brain death”, they expect that the patient has no hope of recovery. Well, after you’ve taken out his heart and his lungs and his liver, yeah, he has no hope of recovery!
It’s not exactly a Monty Python sketch, but it’s disturbingly close.
xalisae, it’s not saving lives we object to. It’s killing Peter to save Paul. People don’t perceive it as that, because they’re told that “brain dead” equals “dead”. But it doesn’t. “Brain dead” isn’t properly a diagnosis; it’s a prognosis — a prediction of what the doctors expect will happen. In the case of “brain death”, they expect that the patient has no hope of recovery. Well, after you’ve taken out his heart and his lungs and his liver, yeah, he has no hope of recovery!
It’s not exactly a Monty Python sketch, but it’s disturbingly close.
“I remember my super-Catholic grandma freaking out when she noticed I had “organ donor” on my driver’s license. I know there’s doctrine in the church which speaks out against that kind of thing, and this goes for a lot of different religious institutions. Personally, I don’t care, and their rhetoric sounds rather alarmist.”
Xalisae,
The Catholic Church is not against organ donation if consent has been given.
From the CCC: 2296 Organ transplants are in conformity with the moral law if the physical and psychological dangers and risks to the donor are proportionate to the good sought for the recipient. Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a expression of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or his proxy has not given explicit consent. Moreover, it is not morally admissible to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.
So, morally, organ donation is a noble act. Still, a few alarms should be going off in people’s heads before this bill becomes law. This is about personal freedom. Where’s the “my body, my choice rhetoric” from the libs? This is one area where I’d rather not be required to “opt-out”. I have my own family to take care of. As I get older, I may change my mind. For now, why should I trust any Doctor “Joe” to be ethical when we have doctors who study side by side with them in medical school that kill babies for a living after they receive their degree? They no longer take seriously the pledge “to do no harm”. With Obamacare, we don’t know how the organ donation laws might change, so it’s probably good to get this discussion out on the table now. Mr. Politician, I’ll keep control over my own life, thank you. For goodness sake, the man sponsoring the bill in Illinois is not even a doctor, he’s a a civil engineer.
“Angel, it’s not saving lives we object to. It’s killing Peter to save Paul. People don’t perceive it as that, because they’re told that “brain dead” equals “dead”. But it doesn’t.”
I KNOW this Christina. Hence my statement “someone has to DIE in order to save another person’s life” or as you put it “killing Peter to save Paul”
I give up. :(
Janet there is a movement afoot in the Catholic church to have the organ donation issue revisited in light of recent and continuing physician experience with comatose, terminal and “PVS” patients.
These doctors, among them Dr. Paul Byrne are pressuring the Vatican to change it’s widespread support for brain death criteria.
This article may be of interest to you:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08091803.html
Angel,
This is off-topic, but are you an American? I was just curious since you spelled “neighbour” with a “u.”
Sorry- I’m just odd like that. ^.^
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/organ-donation/fl00077
Vannah, I used to play an online game that was created by a Canadian fellow, and most of the input commands were in “Canadian”…I played that game for a good many years, and occasionally I find myself STILL typing with the extra “u”. :P
thanks for the link xalisae but you need to read my link because the first two myths in your link are truths.
people are not dead and doctors consider patients with certain kinds of injuries to be prime organ donor candidates.
These are facts.
xalisae, of course they’ll put the best foot forward when they’re trying to recruit organ donors. They have a dog in this fight.
Consider this research gathered by parents after they had consented for their children’s organs to be transplanted:
Dr. Paul Byrne, a neonatologist from Toledo, Ohio, offered a medical perspective – he testified:
“When organs are removed from a “brain dead” donor, all the vital signs of the “donors” are still present prior to the harvesting of organs, such as: normal body temperature and blood pressure; the heart is beating; vital organs, like the liver and kidneys, are functioning; and the donor is breathing with the help of a ventilator.”
….
Some participants in the February meeting defended the use of the “brain death” criteria. Dr. Stewart Youngner of Case Western University in Ohio admitted that “brain dead” donors are alive, but argued that this should not prove an impediment to the harvesting of their organs. His reasoning was that there is such poor “quality of life” in the “brain dead” patient that it would be more beneficial to harvest their organs to extend the life of another than to continue the life of the organ donor.
Dr. Conrado Estol, a neurologist from Buenos Aires, explained the steps that should be followed in determining the “brain death” of a prospective organ donor. Dr. Estol, who is strongly in favor of harvesting human organs to extend the life of other patients, presented a dramatic video of a person diagnosed as “brain dead” who attempted to sit up and cross his arms, although Dr. Estol assured the audience that the donor was a cadaver. This produced an unsettling response among many participants at the conference.
….
In his presentation at the conference, Dr. Cicero Coimbra, a clinical neurologist from the Federal University of Sao Paolo, Brazil denounced the cruelty of the apnea test, in which mechanical respiratory support is withdrawn from the patient for up to 10 minutes, to determine whether he will begin breathing independently. This is part of the procedure before declaring a brain-injured patient “brain dead.” Dr. Coimbra explained that this test significantly impairs the possible recovery of a brain-injured patient, and can even cause the death of the patients.
….
The question of a brain-injured patient’s possible recovery also concerned Dr. David Hill, a British anesthetist and lecturer at Cambridge. He observed: “It should be emphasized first that it was widely admitted, that some functions, or at least some activity, in the brain may still persist; and second that the only purpose served by declaring a patient to be dead rather than dying, is to obtain viable organs for transplantation.” The use of these criteria, he concluded, “could in no way be interpreted as a benefit to the dying patient, but only (contrary to Hippocratic principles) a potential benefit to the recipient of that patient’s organs.”
….
“It is not generally realized,” he said, “that life support is not withdrawn before organs are taken; nor that some form of anaesthesia is needed to control the donor whilst the operation is performed.”
xalisae, also consider The New England Journal of Medicine:
Before the development of modern critical care, the diagnosis of death was relatively straightforward: patients were dead when they were cold, blue, and stiff. Unfortunately, organs from these traditional cadavers cannot be used for transplantation. Forty years ago, an ad hoc committee at Harvard Medical School … suggested revising the definition of death in a way that would make some patients with devastating neurologic injury suitable for organ transplantation under the dead donor rule.
….
[But] when the injury is entirely intracranial, these patients look very much alive: they are warm and pink; they digest and metabolize food, excrete waste, undergo sexual maturation, and can even reproduce. To a casual observer, they look just like patients who are receiving long-term artificial ventilation and are asleep.
The arguments about why these patients should be considered dead have never been fully convincing. The definition of brain death requires the complete absence of all functions of the entire brain, yet many of these patients retain essential neurologic function…. Some have argued that these patients are dead because they are permanently unconscious (which is true), but if this is the justification, then patients in a permanent vegetative state, who breathe spontaneously, should also be diagnosed as dead…. Others have claimed that “brain-dead” patients are dead because their brain damage has led to the “permanent cessation of functioning of the organism as a whole.” Yet evidence shows that if these patients are supported beyond the acute phase of their illness (which is rarely done), they can survive for many years. The uncomfortable conclusion to be drawn from this literature is that although it may be perfectly ethical to remove vital organs for transplantation from patients who satisfy the diagnostic criteria of brain death, the reason it is ethical cannot be that we are convinced they are really dead.
***
Go here to see photos of movement in a “brain dead” woman. She’s not “wiggling her toes” — she’s waving her arms. In other words, she’s NOT DEAD.
Christina you have made two wonderful points:
Dr. Stewart Youngner of Case Western University in Ohio admitted that “brain dead” donors are alive, but argued that this should not prove an impediment to the harvesting of their organs. His reasoning was that there is such poor “quality of life” in the “brain dead” patient that it would be more beneficial to harvest their organs to extend the life of another than to continue the life of the organ donor.
“It is not generally realized,” he said, “that life support is not withdrawn before organs are taken; nor that some form of anaesthesia is needed to control the donor whilst the operation is performed.”
doncha just love the terms “quality of life” and “control”
Also read what these two doctors have to say:
The goal of saving lives (in this case, by transplanting organs) is praiseworthy, but the means to this end involve potentially tragic dilemmas.
….
Brain death is defined as “irreversible coma with absent brainstem reflexes (such as reactions of the pupils to light and other ‘automatic’ reflexes).”
Yet, “irreversible” implies that doctors can predict the future of a patient in coma; but medical science hasn’t reached this degree of perfection. In newspapers as well as in medical books and journals, I’ve read about many patients who seemed to be in a permanent coma but who then woke up days, months, or even years after doctors incorrectly make the diagnosis of irreversible coma.
Likewise, “absent brainstem reflexes” simply means that the brainstem isn’t working properly and generating electrical impulses. But this can be due to what I would call “sleeping” brain cells. Damage to the cells (for example, from lack of oxygen or nutrients) can make them temporarily too weak to generate nerve impulses or EEG signals. With reversal of the damaging condition, the brain cells often heal and resume normal function.
For example, my own mother suffered an oxygen shortage (hypoxia) to her brain several years ago. Her lungs filled with fluid (pulmonary edema) which kept the lungs from absorbing oxygen into her blood, resulting in brain hypoxia. As a result, she was comatose for some days but recovered completely within two months.
Other diagnostic factors such as “low body temperature (hypothermia), sedative or paralytic medicines, or the presence of severe metabolic disorders . . . might confuse the diagnosis of brain death.” ….
….
“Hospitals vary widely in determining brain death” headlined a Jan. 25 Reuters article. Dr. James L. Berna from Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire, described a “disturbing pattern of non-uniformity.”
Does this mean an organ harvest could be premature? Other neurologists certainly think so.
… “In plain, straight talk, the survey indicates a high likelihood that some patients are being ‘harvested’ in some hospitals before they are dead! In hospitals with aggressive transplant programs (hospitals make a huge amount of money on transplant cases), making sure a patient is dead before going to the ‘harvesting suite’ may be viewed as a minor technicality” (http://www.aapsonline.org/newsoftheday/0010 “Top hospitals typically disregard brain-death guidelines”).
On the same Web site, Neurologist Liz Kamenar commented, “I made detailed outlines for Brain Death criteria available for the ICU [Intensive Care Unit] but they weren’t followed even by my own colleagues. The criteria are quite complex and sometimes difficult to do. I was pressured into not ‘going by the book’ by the Organ Procurement Team. They thought I was working against them. They were more concerned about procuring good organs rather than meeting the criteria for Brain Death.”
….
Meh. I’m more inclined to believe physicians at the Mayo Clinic than a loose-knit collection of parents having trouble coming to terms with the demise of their children. Sorry.
xalisae, what about the PHYSICIANS I cited? Under what criteria do you blow THEM off? That they say things that you’d prefer not to believe?
I used to be a big supporter of organ donation. Then the stories started to surface about patients waking up while their families were being pushed to give consent for organ donation. That’s when I started doing my homework instead of just taking everything I was told (by people heavily invested in organ transplants) at face value.
There is a certain value in doing some research on your own and not just believing what you’re told.
yeah, because of course we all know that parents don’t have their children’s interests in mind…..
Christina is also citing leading researchers and doctors with extensive experience in the field Xalisae.
I read that article already, Christina, and you’re cherry-picking. The article goes on to say that one thing which has aided the ethical objections of some, as medicine has progressed, is to only declare death after cardiac arrest. I see no problem with that.
“Diagnostic protocols for brain death actually induce death in patients who could recover to normal life by receiving timely and scientifically based therapies,” Dr. Coimbra, head of the Neurology and Neurosurgery Department at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, told the participants at the “Signs of Life” conference on “brain death.”
Addressing an assembly of about 170 physicians, philosophers, ethicists, lawyers, students, journalists, and clergy, including two Catholic cardinals, Dr. Coimbra said that it is the apnoea test, routinely applied to patients who have suffered acute brain injuries, that frequently causes “brain necrosis,” or permanent and irrecoverable brain damage that is accepted as “brain death”.
The test is applied in emergency rooms or ICUs, often with an “organ procurement agent” standing by to ask relatives for approval for organ retrieval. A patient who needs assistance breathing is removed from the ventilator for up to ten minutes, cutting off oxygen to the brain and slowing the heart rate. If the patient fails to begin breathing without assistance after this time, he is declared “brain dead” and his organs may be legally removed.
The premise of the standard Harvard Criteria for “brain death” is that lack of brain function implies absence of blood circulation to the brain, which is what causes brain necrosis, or the irreversible death of brain cells. But since the definition of the Harvard Criteria, he explained, medical scientists have discovered that the absence of discernable brain function cited by the criteria is not the same as “brain necrosis,” or true brain death. In many cases where there is no discernable brain activity, patients have recovered with appropriate treatment.
So some hospitals, and probably the AMA or some other supervisory board of officials in the medical industry, need to get their acts together in regard to enforcing a strict criteria for helping procure organs while still ensuring the well-being of patients who are not completely dead. I can concede that point while still supporting organ donation programs, and still wanting to be a part of them. I’m probably also the wrong person to talk about concerning this, considering if anything like that happened to me, I would rather die and have my organs harvested (not necessarily in that order? :/ ) than to persist in some sort of vegetative state for years and years. In short, I don’t really care, because I figure after a certain point it’s a lost cause anyway, so why fight it? I’m perfectly at ease with the thought of my own mortality, and if I can help others live in the process, that’s great. But, if you want to try to convince others not to participate in organ donation because they might not fully be at peace with the idea of their lives ending, that’s fine. I’m not trying to convince anyone to become an organ donor, so if that’s your prerogative, so be it. :)
that’s just the point though, xalisae.
You might very well recover and live a full life again IF the doctors don’t write you off as brain dead.
Are you that wiling to assume that a diagnosis of “brain dead” is always the correct one?
example:
Dr. Coimbra told the conference of an experience in his clinical practice as a neurologist involving a 15 year-old girl with a severe brain trauma.
She was declared “brain dead” but he treated her with thyroid hormones and she began to recover. She started breathing and having seizures, he said. “But a ‘dead’ brain cannot seize. That brain cannot express convulsions and she was having convulsions.” This meant that a diagnosis of “brain death” even according to the Harvard Criteria, did not apply.
“And so I went to the doctors in the ICU that, up to that time, were denying proper care to that patient under the assumption that she was brain dead.” One of the attending physicians in the ICU, he relates, wrote on the girl’s chart that even recovery could not reverse a legal definition of “brain death.”
The physician wrote the following statement, a photocopy of which was shown at the conference: “If the diagnostic criteria for a brain death are fulfilled at a certain time, the person is legally dead no matter whether those criteria become no longer fulfilled later on.”
Man makes “miraculous” recovery from brain death after accident. They were gearing up to take his organs, but he started showing signs of recovery and his family noticed.
Woman Awakens after ‘Brain Death’. The family had given permission to take the organs. Then the woman woke up and started talking to the nurses.
Organ transplant supporters say, “Well, obviously there was a misdiagnosis! If the person woke up, then they weren’t really brain dead!” But if the misdiagnosis isn’t detected before the organs are removed, it’s never going to get noticed at all, is it, because the patient will be “no only really dead [but] really most sincerely dead” once her organs are taken out. Therefore we can’t know how often a misdiagnosis of “brain death” erroneously allows organ removal from a patient who would have recovered.
xalisae, that’s what we’re pushing for. INFORMED CONSENT. You might be comfortable with donating even knowing that there is more room for error than we’re typically led to believe. Others aren’t. You might be perfectly comfortable receiving a donor organ, even with this knowledge. Others aren’t. Shouldn’t it be the person’s freely made choice, not one made by legislators being fed information from the organ procurement lobby?
“Dr. Coimbra, head of the Neurology and Neurosurgery Department at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil…”
Oh lordy…as if Brazilian medicine is so far and away above what the rest of the world has to offer…lol
People go to Brazil for medical treatment for a few reasons. The first is cheap (but often sub-par) plastic surgery, because medical practices are not as regulated down there. Another reason is snake-oil salesmen like this guy, preying on people so desperate to have their loved one back, they’ll believe anything.
But, as the article stated, they’ve been steadily migrating towards cardiac arrest as basis for declaring death rather than “brain death”, so I can’t really argue with that, and I would think few could.
I’m a STRONG proponent of organ donation. I have been a part of PICU teams assisting parents during the time in which they have to make that decision. The idea that doctors and nurses are just hovering around someone who they ought to be trying to save in order to harvest their organs is ludicrous and insulting. It is only after we have exhausted all other treatment options and have failed that we begin to discuss end of life options.
Nurses and doctors do NOT present organ donation to families. Only qualified and trained personnel do so. And I guarantee you, knowing that their child’s life was not in vain, that their death, as traumatic as your child’s death is, can be the source of life for multiple people is a huge comfort to most parents. It is not a process that is rushed… and it is only approached with the greatest of respect and care. That is how it should be.
I am against THIS law because I think it removes informed consent. But I am NOT against organ donation.
Thank you for bringing the facts and being a voice of reason, Elizabeth. I can definitely see your point about this law in regard to informed consent.
I’m not against organ donation either Elizabeth. If the donor is truly dead.
And if the donor/family has a chance to give informed consent. But I believe organ donation is in the same category as abortion – the less informed the better.
It may not be happening at all hospitals but as Dr. Coimbra has demonstrated, rules and regs are not being followed. And staff do have to make decisions quickly because once the prospective donor dies, the organs are unusable.
But I believe organ donation is in the same category as abortion – the less informed the better.
I should clarify this statement: I mean this to be the attitude among many doctors.
Thank you, Keli Hu. I agree with you with reservations.
Picket all you want in front of hospitals, PP offices, and clinics. But picketing in front of houses can only end badly. It makes the debate personal. If anyone gets hurt, there would be plenty of grounds for a lawsuit on both sides.
But I don’t put doctors in quotation marks. OB/GYNs and other attendings who do terminations ARE doctors. Same pre-med program. Same residency program. A dedicated fellowship. And a career of helping women plan their pregnancies and keep their reproductive systems healthy.
You’re probably been in contact with some of these doctors without realizing it. And they never judge if and when someone from Jill’s side of the debate needs their care.
I wouldn’t want to taint a doctor’s good name with the violence of an abortionist, Dhalgren. Shame on you for confusing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.